Sense in Reticence Ability

Frederic Raphael, asked which chamber in the castle of his life he kept locked and its contents safe from scrutiny, after the lead character in A Double Life, a novel by Adam Morris, lead character in Raphael's The Glittering Prizes; "It is the very idea of being known that [Raphael] is questioning": "Part of us is nothing to do with anyone else. That's all. There has to be something that one withholds. Reticence has a way of being very eloquent."

Gore Vidal: "I'm exactly as I appear. There is no warm lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water."

Philine, in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "If I love you, what business is it of yours?"

Bob Dylan, long since wearied of playing The Voice of a Generation, asked by a journalist to play the proverbial Artist as Lawgiver regarding the latest nine-days' wonder "burning issue" agitating the period hippoisie: "It's all in the music."

"Colonel" Harland Sanders, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, asked his opinion of the hippies: "They eats chicken, don't they?"

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